This lighter, stronger combat helmet is headed to soldiers

Representatives of the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, out of Natick, Mass., had an array of combat helmets on display at the Pentagon, May 24 and 25, as part of a "Close Combat Lethality Tech Day." This helmet, a NSRDEC prototype, provides equal protection to earlier helmets but at less weight. ( C. Todd Lopez/Army)

In about a year, a helmet under development that shaves nearly half of the weight off soldiers’ current helmet and provides better protection will likely be on soldiers’ heads.

It uses the same materials, shedding an additional accessory currently fielded, all through a change in how the plastic used to make it is processed.

Developers with the Army’s Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center have recently showcased the NSRDEC Prototype Helmet after first sharing some of the work being done on the helmet last year.

More than 100 combat engineers are testing the Integrated Head Protection System this month in Washington.

By: Charlsy Panzino

The NSRDEC helmet is made from ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, which is lighter than Kevlar. The shell of the new helmet weighs 2.5 pounds and the final weight puts it at 3.25 pounds.

That’s 40 percent less than the current helmet configuration.

“There’s kind of a competition between increased threat and weight,” said Richard Green, the director of the Soldier Protection and Survivability Directorate at NSRDEC. “We want to protect against increased threat, while minimizing the weight. That’s our goal.”

The less weight the soldier carries on his or her head the less fatigue they have to deal with, especially over missions that can last anywhere from 12 to 18 hours.

U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center, out of Natick, Massachusetts, has developed new processes for rendering plastics into ballistic materials. That has helped make the Army Combat Helmet Generation II a quarter lighter with more protection than the current helmet worn by soldiers. (Army)

And the new material process gives a 2-pound weight savings over the current Integrated Head Protection System, which the Army tested with airborne units last year and is now fielding. That system requires a “ballistic applique” that can provide rifle fire protection also, according to a Pentagon release.

The standard ACH Gen II helmet protects against 9 mm rounds and some fragmentation. But the new prototype adds rifle protection yet doesn’t need the modular applique for that addition as does the Integrated Head Protection System to provide similar protection to “prevalent rifle threat.”

Past iterations of modern combat helmets by type, performance, weight, material and year of introduction:

“The processing of that material has enabled us to optimize its performance,” said Kenneth Ryan, the Warfighter Protection branch chief at NSRDEC. “Decreasing the load helps optimize soldier performance, and that helps them to be more lethal.”

Todd South is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War. He has written about crime, courts, government and military issues for multiple publications for more than a decade. In 2014, he was named a Pulitzer finalist for local reporting on a project he co-wrote about witness problems in gang criminal cases. Todd covers ground combat for Military Times.